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Easy Author Image v1.3 Update Released

This morning version 1.3 of the Easy Author Image plugin was released and added to the WP plugin repository. Here's a summary of changes and some ideas for 1.4 (and possibly 2).

If you're a hands-on type trying to use custom profile pictures in WordPress, you need to be using the Easy Author Image plugin. As of this morning, version 1.3 is out and we've added better functionality for the developers out there who are enjoying the ease of author avatar customization.

Summary of Changes #

  1. Vladimir of Pixel Industry had a good idea to capitalize on get_avatar's multi-faceted first argument — that is, since get_avatar can take user_id or user_email as the first argument, why shouldn't our get_easy_author_image function? With the help of some syntax from WP's get_avatar, we solidified the function now accept either of the two. If you're already using the plugin, don't worry about anything breaking because the function works with either of the values.
  2. I had some old dependencies labelled "Queenhound" (the name I was making themes under), and wanted to remove them. The JS file that handles the uploader and the queued scripts reflect the plugin name instead of old (and no longer used) names.

Work in Progress for v1.4->2.0 #

One thing I want to incorporate for 1.4 is image previews. Right now, when you select your EAI, a notifier shows up saying that you need to Save Changes before you see anything. I think if there was a way to select the photo from the media uploader and then immediately see the results, users would find this plugin more enjoyable.

A few other things I have in mind really are for a v2 release rather than an update to v1, the most notable one being integration with Gravatar. I like what Automattic has done with Gravatar. The idea that people can register email addresses and have a global profile picture that a good number of sites around the internet incorporate into their comments/sites is awesome. With Easy Author Image, what you end up doing is bypassing this awesome service for more control over your images (because you can handle the EAI in your WP dashboard).

With that in mind, what would happen if we could create/modify Gravatars from our WordPress dashboard? What if under Users->Your Profile there was a box to create, edit, and delete a Gravatar associated with the email address you used to login to the site with? As it stands, Gravatar does have an API but it's limited to unauthenticated requests for images and profile data. What Gravatar needs is a way to modify avatar/profile information from the WordPress dashboard, giving users complete Gravatar/WP integration.

What do you think? Would you want to be able to use/modify a Gravatar profile from the Profile screen? Why or why not?